How to Save a Life
by Here Be Monsters
Summary: He watched her through her Games, half-hoping she would win. She was so calm, so collected, and so deadly. Haymitch may never have seen his own Victor, but he has been assisting every other Victor survive in a new and deadly arena since he won. Sadly, the arena of the Capitol doesn't disappear after a few weeks, and mass murder isn't an option. X-posted on AO3 as TheDreamingSpires
1. Chapter 1

He watched her through her Games, half-hoping she would win. She was so calm, so collected, and so deadly. He watched her persuade the Career pack, which was greatly diminished due to the lack of District 4 tributes, to let her join. He watched her befriend Maxim, the enormous District 2 tribute, and get him fully on to her side. He watched her fall a little bit in love with the hulking boy, and watched her take her anger out on the District 6 boy after Maxim was killed.

She started her Games alone, a single District 5 tribute, watching as her district partner was blown up by his landmine on the first day, in the first minute of the 67th Hunger Games. She ran, after that. No one could have blamed her. She worked out how to survive in the awful, desert arena. Worked out how to ration her water carefully, and worked out how to use her sword, the sword her district partner had failed to get, so precisely that it moved almost silently through the air.

She joined the Career pack, what was left of it, after just four days in the arena, but in this arena that equated to the usual fortnight. It was just Maxim, his district partner, and the District 1 boy who remained. They headed back to the Cornucopia after she joined; they listened to her when she explained it was suicide to stay out under the desert sun.

It must have happened on the way back to the Cornucopia, he guessed. Sometime around then, at least. All he knew for sure was that too many tributes had died too quickly. The Capitol were growing bored, watching District 4 tributes fall down dead from lack of water and District 11 tributes go mad with a lack of anything _green_. The Gamemakers rarely go back on an arena design, but they did that year. In a crevice that had occurred after the District 5 boy had jumped off his plate a second too early, they built a lake. It was shallow, and the water was seemingly always hot, but it was still water in the desert.

She moved carefully, the little District 5 girl, he'd give her that. After the District 2 girl was picked off by a throwing star to the brain just before they reached the water at the Cornucopia, she perfected a stance that allowed her to see everything around her, almost all at once. That wasn't exactly hard, though. There are few trees in a desert, after all. When the District 1 boy had his head smashed in by a rock when he went to investigate a strange noise he heard while on guard, she became almost attached at the hip to Maxim. Maxim, on his part, didn't seem to mind. She was the brains of the operation, he the brawn.

What could only have been a day or so later, the District 12 girl appeared in the girl's eyeline. She sat up from where she was lying by the water, immediately on full alert. Maxim lumbered towards the girl, yelling about how lucky District 12 was, still having both tributes alive at this stage of the competition. The girl, the District 5 girl who should never be underestimated at any cost, slipped from 12's sight without her noticing. He knew immediately that the girl from 12 was dead meat. While the scrawny, starving, dehydrated girl from the Seam of District 12 tried pointlessly to distract Maxim from her own pack's approach, the girl from 5 slipped up behind her and broke her neck. She and Maxim only had a split second in which to smile at each other before a throwing star entered his neck, leaving him gasping on the ground. District 5 watched, crying, her hand over his heart and her hair falling silently into his face, as Maxim died. Then, she decided to really go to town the 12 girl's pack.

The boy from 6 had the throwing stars. He died with one being shoved mercilessly down his throat, after she broke his wrist. The girl from 10 had a spiked whip, which she twirled pointlessly around her head. The girl from 5 waited until it accidently snagged a rock, before getting in close and breaking her neck, too. Still, she took too long. He watched, part fascinated, part horrified, as the boy from 12 - a boy who resembled a dinosaur in a strange, primal way - attacked her, slashing her from her shoulder to the top of her leg with a scythe he had found god-knows-where. She gasped in pain, dropping to the ground, and smashing his legs out from underneath him, pulling herself away from him as his head collided with a rock. With her last remaining effort, she stumbled up the Cornucopia, which this year was moulded to look like a pile of rocks. She had been studying it since she had arrived. She knew what its secret purpose was, and she was going to exploit it.

As she reached the highest point of the Cornucopia, Dinosaur Boy began climbing it himself. As the girl looked down into the water next to the Cornucopia, she allowed herself a small smile. She kicked forwards, watching as the rocks fell and crushed the life out of her one remaining competitor. It was obvious, in hindsight. The Cornucopia was built to remove anyone unlucky enough to be taking advantage of the arrival of the water if someone disturbed the carefully piled rocks. The rocks would fall, smashing both the climber and the drinkers to pieces. At the end of the day, the water was just another arena trap. Someone very wise once said 'there is no such thing as a free lunch'. In the arena, this was completely and utterly true.

Throwing herself into the water as the entire structure began to collapse; the girl from 5 appeared on the surface of the shallow pool just as the boy's cannon rang out. She revealed a beautiful smile, beaming radiantly at the crew of the vehicle which came to collect her.

He slightly envied them from being at the receiving end of that look.


	2. Chapter 2

He first met her in person at the preparations for the Victor's interview. She had already been crowned: thankfully, a decent stylist had been found for District 5 this year, and she kept up a steady stream of appearances in shining silver fabrics to signify her district's export of power.

It was at the interview that she really dressed to impress. Her long red hair was left loose, while her knee-length, long-sleeved, skintight dress appeared to be made out of a wet-look, black material. She did well through her interview, smiling happily through thick, black eye makeup. It wasn't until she stood at the end that the full impact of her dress was realised. As she rose, a thunderstorm played out across the material. Lightning bolts cracked across the black sky of the fabric, while thunder clouds rumbled menacingly around her midriff. It took him a minute to realise that her stylist had taken all the talk of how much power could be leeched from thunderstorms completely seriously. She smiled at the gasps of the audience, waving and winking flirtatiously at some of the more important male viewers.

As she walked down the stairs, her dress calmed down, and her entire demeanour deflated. He felt almost sorry for her, alone among a sea of only elderly District 5 victors. No mentor advice had helped her. She had won only on her own character, using her vicious loyalty to her own advantage.

He walked over to her, not yet quite drunk enough for anything more exciting.

"So, congratulations."

She looked shocked to hear anyone speaking to her, and turned in confusion. Her expression became more incredulous as she recognised who was speaking to her.

"Haymitch Abernathy?"

"The one and only."

She looked right at him, easily cutting through the layers of crap that he used to fortify himself against the Capitol.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Wally. And Deia. No one deserves to die that way."

He wasn't sure what saddened him more. The fact that she knew their names, or the fact that he didn't.

"You didn't know, did you? Uma said that you spent these last games in a worse stupor than she's ever seen anyone in before."

Uma. Uma Jakes. The District 5 winner of the 31st Hunger Games. He smiled at his vague memory of her mentoring those from District 5 he had fought against, and inevitably killed, if only by proxy.

"I make a point not to learn anyone's name, unless they are going to suddenly become important in some way."

"Is that a round-about way of saying you don't know my name?"

In a strange way, she reminded him of Fern, who had been killed all those years ago, just because he used a part of the arena that was mean to be 'off limits' as a weapon. This girl was different, though. She had coldness in her eyes in a way Fern had never had. Her visage was stony, her demeanour calm. While Fern had been all softness and light, blond and blue-eyed, the District 5 girl was all angles and darkness, with auburn hair and eyes as deep green as the forests that surrounded District 12. Her gaze slightly unnerved him, yet he couldn't quite look away, for fear she would snap under the weight of loneliness that Victordom brought with it.

"How'd you guess?"

"Althea Gould."

"Althea?"

"It means 'healing' in some ancient language or other. The Games commentators called me Thea."

"Mind if I join them?"

"Knock yourself out."

"Well then, Thea. Going back to where we started, congratulations. And good luck. You're going to need it, being a Victor now and all."

He marched off, then. After all, he had an image to protect, and he was sure if he stayed any longer, it would begin to show that he has actually been sober for the entire 67th Hunger Games.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't until after the Victory Tour, when the President held a banquet for all Victors, that he saw Thea again. She was standing, as was to be expected, in the centre of an enormous crowd of her fellow Victors. Finnick Odair, the winner from the 65th Games, was talking to her animatedly, and she was laughing. He had never seen her laugh for real. She laughed with Caesar, on television, but that was fake and put-on. To anyone else, it probably would have seemed real, as even to him it was rather convincing. But, Haymitch was the master of recognising emotions and when they were faked, and the only time he had seen Thea truly happy was when she was with Maxim in the arena, the time they found the water after her suggestion to return to the Cornucopia. Now, she was laughing, joining in with Finnick's joke and making the older Victors laugh and shake their heads sadly, not wanting to tell the young Victors what would be expected of them soon.

It was Chaff's fault he got so drunk that evening. He wasn't actually fully in charge of his actions, he was pretty sure, as he strode over to Thea and asked for a word. Finnick went to join Mags, leaving Althea free to join Haymitch. She followed him gamely, standing next to him on the balcony and staring out at the Capitol with wide eyes.

"How did you know?"

She turned to find him right up close to her face, looking intently into her eyes.

"Know what?" she murmured, watching him back.

"The Cornucopia. How did you know it would do that? How did you jump into that water? You're District 5, you aren't meant to be able to swim."

She smiled shyly, then replied, "I guessed."

Now it was his turn to be confused. "What?"

"I guessed that the Gamemakers hadn't actually just changed their plan. I guessed they would have always been betting on having to make that lake. So, I thought about all the possible reasons, and I worked it out." She blinked at him expectantly, waiting for him to finish what she had said. Even in his drunken state, he realised what she was suggesting.

"They put the pool there so all the remaining tributes gravitated together, and then set it so that if anyone climbed the Cornucopia to escape from their enemies, the rocks would fall and everyone around the pool would die."

There was an awkward silence in which neither of them spoke. A man wearing a fluorescent green suit appeared on the balcony and vomited off the edge of it, before smiling sheepishly at Haymitch, winking flirtatiously at Thea, and returning to the party.

Thea watched him re-enter the ballroom with a look of thinly veiled disgust on her face, before continuing her explanation.

"It was meant to be like the volcano in your Games, I think. It was meant to take out a decent part of the competition, preferably the Careers. The Gamemakers forgot that it would actually just crown a winner, as humans need water to survive. They forgot that until that pool appeared, people would be dying left, right and centre."

He doubted that the Gamemakers would like to be described as 'forgetful', rather 'dreadfully busy and talented', but he wasn't going to argue.

"Clever girl. But you didn't answer the second part of my question," he leant closer into her face, "how can you swim?"

"That's easy. Water power. We have massive bodies of water back home in District 5, to generate wave power. My family work with the water department. If you gave me a solar panel, I wouldn't know what to do with it any more than you would. Power stereotype, much?"

He smiled then, and leant back.

"Now I get to ask you a question. Why do you keep being nice to me? I killed both of your tributes in that arena, and they both reached the final eight. No one from 12 has reached the final eight in years, and suddenly they both do, and I kill them. Why do you even talk to me at all?"

"Because I know what's coming for you. And in the Victor business, kid, you can't hold grudges for long."

Feeling as though he had given her enough insight for one night, he headed back to the party. Later on, when he heard someone asking where Finnick was, he heard them get the reply that Finnick and Thea had been summoned to the President's private study. A feeling of dread settled in his gut that he couldn't shake for the rest of the evening.


	4. Chapter 4

At the next Games, she mentored. It was stupid, really. She was only seventeen, and there was still Uma and another female mentor to do the job, but Thea was sent anyway. He first saw her while they were preparing to send their tributes out. He had a couple of scraggly Seam kids (named Rick and Clover – he had decided to start learning names again after last year), and she had two kids who looked as though they could use a little more sunlight, judging by the unhealthy pallor of their skin.

He would have gone to talk to her, if it wasn't for the appearance of Finnick Odair, who smiled at the pair of District 5 kids before pulling Thea over to see his own kids. They were Careers, it was obvious. Haymitch had no interest in Careers.

"Mr Abernathy, sir?" Clover murmured anxiously.

"Yeah?" Haymitch had grown sick of correcting them long ago. Let the kids call him 'Mr Abernathy' and 'sir'. It wasn't as though they were going to live much longer, anyway. Let them call him what they wanted.

"Those tributes, sir," she gestured at the pair from District 3, "the boy doesn't look very well, sir."

Haymitch turned from his own tributes (who were dressed in blue overalls and yellow miner's helmets, with their names printed on their backs) towards the District 3 tributes, who were wearing outfits completely made out of different coloured wires. Clover had a point, he realised quickly, and watched in confused horror as the boy collapsed backwards out of his chariot.

All hell broke loose.

The kids from the Career districts laughed and craned their necks to see what was going on (except for District 4's tributes, who were swatted across the back of the head by an enraged Mags), while the kids from the other districts all either ran to help or cowered, deciding whatever was wrong with the boy was infectious. The noise level rocketed, and Haymitch quickly found himself unable to think.

"Everyone, be quiet!" he roared, feeling slightly smug when he realised everyone was now listening to him. "Tributes, back in you chariots!" They did as they were told, watching him as he thought through his next order.

"Finnick, Chaff," he motioned at the two mentors nearest to the boy, whose own mentor, Beetee, was sitting looking a little stunned while comforting the girl tribute, "you get the boy out of here. Thea," he turned to her, where she was standing with an arm around her tributes, "you go and tell Caesar there has been a change of plans. Try to hold the show up a bit. Whatever you have to do."

All three mentors disappeared; the two men with the boy, and Thea in the direction of the commentary booth.

She held the show up for twenty minutes, and no one in the Capitol gave as much as a squeak of complaint. Watching a replay later that night, Haymitch watched as Thea flirted, joked and strategized with Caesar, all the while playing up the witty, pretty, fun and flirtatious angle which she had decided to use. The people of the Capitol were eating out of her hand, listening to her talk about the boring hum-drum life she lived in District 5 compared to the exciting drama of the Capitol. She spoke about the love of anchovies she had developed since discovering what they were, which prompted the Caesar to ask her about her relationship with Finnick. She blushed, smiled, and winked, and finalised her hold over the people of the Capitol. When it was finally time for the parade, a few of them looked a little disappointed that the interview had ended.

It was only then that Haymitch realised how resourceful Thea truly was. She was intelligent, yes, but her true edge was her ability to use anything to tug on people's heartstrings. He dreaded her finding out what Snow had in store for her.


	5. Chapter 5

It turned out, she already knew. Later that year, Thea started becoming a regular guest on Caesar's show, filling the role of 'pretty, unaffected Victor', alongside Flint Corby (District 1 Victor of the 62nd Games, who filled the role of 'badly injured but charismatic Victor', with the left side of his body badly frost-bitten) and Dean Pierce (District 2 Victor of the 64th Games, who filled the role of 'broody but handsome Victor'). She play flirted with all three men on screen, seemingly preferring the badly-scarred Flint to the mysterious Dean one week, then switching the next. After a scant two weeks, there was a Capitol betting ring running on which of her fellow Victors Thea would have a one-night-stand with first. While the people of the Capitol loved the idea of a marriage between Victors, those who ran the Capitol, and the PR people, realised that a wedding between two of the most popular Victors to date (as Flint and Dean were, in their own ways, just as popular as Thea) would in the end be less profitable than a long-standing single Victor.

Haymitch met her at the post-Games Victor party again that year, but noticed something different about her immediately. This year, Victors were openly encouraged to bring a date with them to the mansion of the President of Panem, but Thea hadn't brought a guest. Instead, she had brought the President's youngest son, Caius.

"Thea. Long time, no see. In person, at least."

She had the decency to blush, at least. "Haymitch. So, you've been watching Caesar's show?"

"What else do you do when you want to watch something that is both mind-numbingly boring and easy to understand when drunk?"

She was about to reply, when Caius Snow suddenly appeared behind her, grabbed her arse, and put his tongue in her ear. Haymitch turned away, and waited for her to get rid of him.

"Caius, please. I'm just talking to a friend."

"But I want to _go_. This party isn't particularly exciting, and I know some much more interesting things we could be doing…"

"Let me finish chatting to Haymitch, then we'll go, yeah?"

Caius considered, cocking his head in a ridiculous fashion. Finally he nodded, and wandered off.

She turned to look at him, smiled awkwardly, and he took hold of her arm and marched her onto the balcony, the same one as they had talked on last year.

"What the fuck?"

She blinked at him wearily.

"This is your duty, isn't it? The Odair boy got 'Capitol whore', you got 'youngest son damage control'."

She remained silent.

"Wait, you don't want anything to do with that creep, right? 'Cause no matter what he's said to you, he's lying. Everything he says will be chock full of lies."

"Of course I don't want anything to do with him!" she looked outraged, and murderous, and, worst of all, upset. Upset that he had ever though she would willingly sell herself to Caius Snow. "You know how they do business here. They sell your virginity to the highest bidder, then make you see whoever they want you to see. I was already damaged goods. Snow said he was helping me."

"Damaged goods? What?" Haymitch was getting angry himself, now. He had watched so many Victors go through this, and just helped them in any way he could. Now, it seemed personal and he had no idea why. Maybe because she reminded him so much of Fern.

"I slept with Maxim." Some of the tension left her body after she finished her short statement, obviously happy to have got it off her chest.

"In the arena?" He knew it was possible – Johanna Mason, the victor of the 63rd Games at age 17, had slept with two of her fellow tributes before killing them later on.

"No! Before. Not on camera."

"Before? In the Training Centre?"

She merely nodded, bashfully. He didn't want details, he would leave it at that. He didn't want to embarrass her.

"So now you have to deal with Caius Snow. For how long?"

"Snow wants us to get married. His granddaughter, Louise, is quite a weak little girl, and so far she's his only grandchild. He hopes that if his son marries a Victor, then the bloodline will become stronger."

Haymitch was silent, then cupped her cheek in his hand.

"If you need anything, you have to come find me. We Victors have to stand together, or not at all."

She hugged him. Silent tears ran down her cheeks, slightly smudging her perfect makeup. After a minute, he wrapped his arms around her too, and put his cheek on the top of her head.

"It'll be okay, sweetheart. It'll all be fine."

She let go of him carefully, tossing her hair over her shoulder and picking up a half-full and discarded champagne glass before drinking it in one gulp.

She gave him a small, cheeky smile, and asked, "before I go, do you want to do shots?"


End file.
